Monday, August 31, 2009

This article will come in handy for those of you who are interested in Flash, or perhaps have a basic idea and would like to learn more about Adobe Flash.

Before we get started:The list below provides you valuable and useful short tips including sample FLA source files to help you understand better and apply faster in your Flash projects. You need to have Adobe Flash CS3 or CS4 Professional software installed in your computer to open the source files.

1. Understanding Object Names

Usually some Flash beginners think that object names in the library are same as instance names. In fact, they ARE NOT. Please make sure that you do not get confused with instance names, class names, and object names in the library. They have totally different meanings in Flash. Below example shows that gray_box_01 is the instance name, graybox is the class name without spacing (which is used to create instances by ActionScripts), gray box is the movieclip (or object) name with spacing in the library.

Moreover, gray_box_01 is just an instance of gray box movieclip in the library, there can be gray_box_02, gray_box_03, gray_box_04, etc and they are just instances of the same gray box movieclip.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Web optimization is a vital part of web development and maintenance but also something often overlooked by webmasters. Just think of the money you can save, and how it can potentially help increase your readership and traffic when they are properly done.

If you have not done any optimization to your website (or blog) so far or merely curious how it can help speed up your site, please take a look at this list of optimization tips we’ve put together.

We’ve split things up into 3 separate sections for better readability – respectively server-side optimization, assets optimization (which includes web components like CSS, Javascript, images, etc) and platform, where we’ll focus on Wordpress optimization. At the last section, we throw in a couple of links we figured useful. Full list after jump.

Optimization: Server-side

Choose a decent Web Host

Your web hosting account has no direct relationship with the optimizations you are about to perform but we figured choosing the right web hosting account so important we decided to bring it to your attention first. Hosting account is the foundation of your website/blog where it’s security, accessibility (cPanel, FTP, SSH), server stability, prices and customer supports all play important roles. You need to make sure you are in good hands.

Recommended reading:How to Choose a Web Host by wikiHow is a great article that gives you steps and tips you should know before purchasing any web hosting account.

Host Assets Separately

When we mention assets, we meant web components like images and static scripts that don’t require server-side processing. These includes any web graphics, images, Javascripts, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), etc. Hosting assets separately is not a must, but we’ve seen tremendous result in terms of server stability with this implementation when the blog was having a traffic spike.

Compression with GZip

In short, contents travel from server side to client side (vicet versa) whenever a HTTP request is make. Compressing the content for sending greatly reduce the time needed to process each request.

GZip is one of the best ways to do this and it various according to the type of servers you are using. For instance, Apache 1.3 uses mod_zip, Apache 2.x uses mod_deflate and here’s how you do it in Nginx. Here are some really good articles to get you familiar with server side compressions:

Minimize Redirects

Webmasters do URL redirect (whether it’s Javascript or META redirects) all the time. Sometimes it’s purpose is to point users from an old page to new, or merely guide users to the correct page. Each redirect create an additional HTTP request and RTT (round-trip-time). The more redirection you have, the slower user will get to the destination page.

Recommended reading: Avoid Redirects by Google Code gives you a good overview on the matter. The article also recommends some practical ways to minimize redirection to increase serving speed.

Reduce DNS Lookups

According to Yahoo! Developer Network Blog, it takes about 20-120 milliseconds for DNS (Domain Name System) to resolve IP address for a given hostname or domain name and the browser cannot do anything until the process is properly completed.

Author Steve Souders suggested that splitting these components across at least two but no more than four hostnames reduces DNS lookups and allow high degree parallel downloads. Read more on the article.

Optimization: The Assets (CSS, Javascripts, Images)

Merge Multiple Javascripts into One

Folks at rakaz.nl shares how you can combine multiple Javascripts like:

Compress Javascript & CSS

Minify is a PHP5 app that can combine multiple CSS and Javascript files, compress their contents (i.e. removal of unnecessary whitespace/comments), and serve the results with HTTP encoding (gzip/deflate) and headers that allow optimal client-side caching.

Compress them online!There are also some web services that allow you to manually compress your Javascripts and CSS files online. Here are few we come to know:

Customize Header Expiry/Caching

By using a customized Expiry header, your web components like images, static files, CSS, Javascript skipped unnecessary HTTP request when the same user reload the page for the second time. It reduces the bandwidth needed and definetely help in serving the page faster.

Off-load The Assets

By off-loading, we mean separating the Javascripts, images, CSS and static files from main server where the website is hosted and place them on another server or rely on other web services. We’ve seen significant improvement here in Hongkiat by off-loading assets to other web services available, leaving the server to mainly do the PHP processing. Here are some suggestions of online services for off-loading:

*Paid hostings – Paid services always have better reliability and stability. If your website is constantly requesting for the assets, you’ll need to make sure they are in good hands. We recommend Amazon S3 and Cloud Front.

Handling Web Images

Images are important part of your website. However if they are not properly optimize, they can become a burden and end up utilizing unpredictably large amount of bandwidths on daily basis. Here are some best practices to optimize your images:

Optimize PNG ImagesFolks at Smashing Magazine describes some clever techniques that may help you optimize your PNG-images.

Don’t Scale ImagesAlways practice inserting the width and height for each images. Also don’t scale down an image just because you need a smaller version on the web. For example: Do not force scale a 200×200 px image to 50×50 px for your website by altering the width and height. Get a 50×50 px instead.

Optimizing with Web Services and Tools. Good news is, you don’t need to be a Photoshop expert to optimize your images. There are plenty of web services and tools to help you do the job.

Handling CSS

Modern websites uses CSS as the foundation of the style, as well as the look and feel. Not only CSS gives great flexibility to changes, it is also lesser in terms of codes needed. However, if they are badly coded, it could be a backfire. Here are some checklists, or rather guides to you make sure your CSS are properly optimized:

Keep CSS shortWhen they give the same style, the codes are better the shorter they are. Here’s a CSS Shorthand guide you’ll probably need.

Use CSS SpriteCSS Sprite technique reduce HTTP request each time a page is load by combining several (or all) images together on a single image file and control it’s output with CSS background-position attribute. Here are some useful guides and techniques to create CSS Sprites:

Reduce amount of CSS filesThe reason is simple, the more CSS files you have the more HTTP request it’ll have to make when a webpage is being requested. For example, instead of having multiple CSS files like the following:

Optimization for Wordpress

From time to time, we monitor, benchmark and analyze the performance of our Wordpress blog. If the site is running slow, we need to know why. Here are some basic changes we’ve done and we figured will significantly increase the speed of your Wordpress blog.

Cache Your Worpress Blog

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. We also recommend WP Super Cache which enhances from the previous mentioned plugin and too does a great job.

Deactivate and Delete Unused Plugins

When you notice your blog is loading real slow, see if you have a lot of plugins installed. They might be the culprit.

Remove unnecessary PHP Tags

If you take a look into your theme’s source codes, you will find a lot tags like these:

Last but not least…

YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. It gives you a good idea what needs to be done in order for the website to load faster.

Pingdom Tools take a complete load of your website including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes) and shows you general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Have you ever feel that traditional fonts are a little too boring and plain for your designs and artworks? Ever wanted to use fonts that are funkier, stylish and fun to look at?

Cartoon and comic fonts are very popular and most people are only familiar with Comic Sans MS and that’s about it. We have now discovered 40 unique and refreshing cartoon and comic fonts for you to give your artwork and design that extra ummmppphhh. Here are a few for sneak preview and the full list is right after the jump.